Climate change experts have recently estimated that the last four years have been the hottest on record, but in shipping it feels like a different matter altogether. As a whole the markets do appear to have seen some further gradual improvement in 2018, but without heating up too much. But do wider readings of the shipping ‘temperature’ tell us anything more?

Every year, readers of the Shipping Intelligence Weekly are invited to submit their predictions of the value of the ClarkSea Index at the start of November the following year. Of course, forecasting anything in an industry as volatile as shipping is always a challenge, but with a prize of a case of champagne at stake, many of our readers are eager to give it a go. So, how did last year’s entrants get on?

One of the notable features of the shipping markets in 2017 was the record level of S&P activity, with reported sales volumes topping 90m dwt in capacity and more than 1,600 units. After a slow start in early 2018, this year’s activity levels subsequently picked up, but indications suggest a slower Q3 than one year previously. Where does this leave 2018 S&P volumes against last year’s record?

This week, the US announced that further tariffs on a wide range of imports from China will come into force from Monday, with China confirming retaliatory measures. These developments represent an escalation in the dispute over trade between the two countries, and against this backdrop, it is worth taking another look (see SIW 1327) at the potential impact of tariffs announced this year in a shipping context.

A common ‘rule of thumb’ statistic in shipping market analysis, in order to give an idea of prospective capacity growth, is the orderbook expressed as a percentage of the existing fleet. Today, at a global fleet level, that figure stands at a historically relatively low level in dwt terms (10%), but what does that actually tell us? This week’s Analysis takes a look at the pros and cons of this widely used statistic.

The last few months have seen increasing friction surrounding trade globally, with the US and China in particular making headlines for announcing proposals to introduce new import tariffs. These developments have raised concerns over a potential negative impact on seaborne trade volumes, but how much trade could actually be affected? The devil is in the detail, so this week’s Analysis takes a closer look…

From one viewpoint, given the huge range of companies involved, the ownership of the world fleet can look quite fragmented. But from another, the prominence of larger owners who account for the majority of tonnage is quite clear too. Upon closer inspection however, some sectors appear proportionally more likely to be home to the bigger, more diversified players than others.